


gladly beyond

by mapped



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), Dreams and Nightmares, First Kiss, Getting Together, Introspection, M/M, ft. a good dose of kristen & riz friendship because i love them so much!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23502919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: In which Baron from the Baronies is no longer an enemy but a guide, and Riz learns how to go towards what he’s afraid of.[Set post-finale of FH Live: Sophomore Year - major spoilers!]
Relationships: Riz Gukgak/Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 52
Kudos: 218





	gladly beyond

**Author's Note:**

> Title, sappily, from ["somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond"](https://poets.org/poem/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond) by e.e. cummings, because I just kept thinking about the first line of this poem while I was writing this.

Riz remembers so many things from the Forest vividly. The terror of it still grips his heart at night, when he’s alone in his office, working. The endless mirrors and the dark tangle of trees. His friends dying. Himself dying.

There’s something he doesn’t remember so well, but he wishes he did.

He was about to fall and plummet a hundred feet—that part was extremely bad. But then Fabian, Fabian. Riz was too busy worrying about falling to see what Fabian actually did, but there was the shock of Fabian’s sheet wrapping around him, soft cool silk, and a burning kiss on his cheek, and then he was in Fabian’s arms, swaddled in the sheet, and Fabian just kept holding him like that.

This was entirely a blur. Riz thinks about it often though, often enough that there’s probably nothing left of the original memory. It’s all thinking, not remembering. Thinking about being held.

It had all been so confusing at the time he hadn’t actually quite figured out who had kissed his cheek. Only later did he put it together, and was embarrassed by the disappointment he felt.

But then he remembered the fire elemental kissing Fabian and how Fabian had danced around it and that had been the most beautiful thing Riz had ever seen, and he wasn’t disappointed anymore.

* * *

Now that Tracker’s gone to Fallinel, Kristen has a lot more time on her hands, so she and Riz hang out a lot, because Fig’s writing songs and smooching Ayda, and Gorgug’s having tinkering lessons from his parents and smooching Zelda, and Adaine’s not smooching anyone but she _is_ reconnecting with her sister and taking more time for herself to heal from all the stuff that went down in the Forest. And Fabian’s smooching—

Well.

That’s precisely what Kristen’s interested in gossiping about and Riz does not want to be in this room right now, sitting on Kristen’s desk, which is littered with sketches and notes.

“No, seriously, what do you think of them? Like I gotta say, Aelwyn is like, _whew_ , am I right?” Kristen fans herself, grinning. “So I get where Fabian’s coming from but I can’t imagine what they’re like together.”

“Mm-hmm,” Riz says noncommitally, swinging his feet.

The thing is, Fabian’s been texting Riz, asking him to come over. But Riz always has excuses. The livestream thing really helped his business take off, though people kind of treat him as a minor celebrity now which is weird. So he has a ton of cases which are all kinda trivial but he’s at least getting some money from them. Still, he’s managed to find time for Kristen.

He doesn’t _want_ to imagine what Aelwyn and Fabian are like together. And he—he’s seen it. That first mirror in the Forest. It was Fabian he saw first. Fabian’s body pressed up against Aelwyn’s.

He doesn’t want to hang out with Fabian because Fabian will probably want to talk about Aelwyn, how hot she is, how hot the sex they’re having is. Riz went through that with Kristen when Kristen was first hooking up with Tracker and Riz could bear it with Kristen but he won’t be able to bear it with Fabian. He won’t.

“Is this making you uncomfortable?” Kristen asks, more seriously, peering up at Riz from where she’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. “We can talk about something else.” 

He hates that Kristen can pick up on his discomfort, but he also loves her for it. He looks at her glowing little pinky. Far more than any of them she flung herself wholeheartedly into the dark and now she’ll carry this light with her for the rest of her days. “Can you tell me more about your new god?”

“My goddex.” Kristen smiles beatifically like someone in love, the way she does when she talks about Tracker. “Sure. Of course. Are you finally interested in finding faith? Or what in particular are you interested in about them?”

“How did you… How did you know? When you went towards the Nightmare King? It could’ve been so bad. We could’ve lost you forever.”

“I didn’t know.” Kristen shrugs, as though that isn’t an absolutely horrifying fact to reveal. “That’s their whole deal, right? I didn’t know, and I’ve just spent so long sitting with my own doubt that I’m okay with how that feels. If it’s scary to try and figure something out, it’s scary because you might end up with an answer you don’t like, or an answer that changes, or you might not be able to come up with any answers at all, but sometimes the answers aren’t the most important part, and sometimes you just have to grow and change to become the kind of person that is okay with the answers that you weren’t always okay with, and once you accept that and value that, you can get past your fear of what you don’t know. I love being the kind of person who is okay with walking through the dark and figuring things out by myself, for myself. I don’t want someone to offer me easy, comfortable answers on a plate. Does that make any sense?”

Saint Applebees. Riz really loves her. How she can switch from wanting to drink in all the juicy details of their friends’ sex lives one second to a profoundly wise monologue the next.

Riz is not very wise. What Kristen is saying doesn’t wholly make sense to him just because instinctively it goes against who he is. He wants to say, _I hate not knowing_. He wants to say, _What I like about mysteries is solving them. Having all the clues slot together neatly. But I can’t do that with all the confusing things going on in my life_. He wants to say, _I do the work I do precisely because there’s always a right answer and I’m good at finding it_.

But at the same time, Kristen has been talking about religion and faith for as long as Riz has known her, and nothing else she’s said has ever appealed to him the way this does.

So he decides to try something new. To sit with the doubt and not immediately go to dispel it. “Have you been able to talk to Cassandra since you left the Forest? Like, how do you pray?”

Kristen sprawls out on her purple rug, looking up at the ceiling. “Every day when it’s getting dark I go outside and sit in the garden for a while and I go through the things I’m feeling. Like, Tracker being away, that’s very hard. I think some of the things she said to me while she was possessed in the Forest are maybe kind of true actually, which was difficult for us to process, but we’re working on that. And my family… I still wonder if there’s anything I can do to change my parents’ minds, or how I can have a relationship with my brothers again. All of those things. And I also reflect on Cassandra’s own journey from the unnamed goddess they used to be, to the Nightmare King they were forced to become, to what they are now. I can’t chat with them directly anymore, but I know they’re listening. Sometimes they appear to me in my dreams, or I can feel that my dreams are messages from them.” She tilts her head towards Riz, her gaze gentle and searching. “If you ever want to try praying to them I’d be really happy for you to join me one evening.”

“Oh.” That sounds… all right. “Thanks. That might be nice. I’ll let you know.”

“No pressure.” Kristen sits up, resting her chin on her bare knees, her expression quiet and thoughtful and open. “But look, whatever you’re having trouble with, it’s okay to not know. I’m here if you want to talk about it. And if you’re not ready to talk about it, the one thing you _should_ know for certain is that I’m still with you no matter what.”

Riz remembers all the times Kristen’s been with him through the worst. All the moments that felt overwhelmingly like defeat and disaster. The panic, the confusion, the fear.

The way she looks now, serene in her bedroom, a giant painting of Cassandra on her wall, surrounded by photos of Tracker and the rest of the Bad Kids. Her staff, the silver question mark, lounging inquisitively in a corner against her bed.

It barely weighs anything, unlike Gorgug’s cool new axe, which Riz is definitely nowhere near strong enough to lift. But somehow, Riz can’t imagine having the strength to wield Kristen’s Staff of Doubt either.

Sometimes he remembers how she was the only one of them who _chose_ to have detention on that first day of freshman year, and it makes him want to cry. He’s so lucky to know her.

* * *

The sky outside is orange and gold, a fiery colour that now makes Riz think of kisses. He sits on his bed and stares at his crystal. Another text from Fabian.

He’s home because his mom for once can be home early too, and she’s making dinner. He can smell it from his room, something rich and fragrant and spicy. He feels like she’s trying harder to spend more time at home with him now, after she watched the whole of that livestream video. So much happened in it and Riz had been so eager to show her the cool stuff like him shooting the mirror and killing Kalina that he forgot he kind of… died. It’s not _so_ bad because he was the one wearing the camera so his mom didn’t have to see his dead body or anything but still. It’s not great, either.

He plays with his crystal, not replying to Fabian’s text. It’s weird because he spent most of freshman year and even most of sophomore year up until spring break always trying to get Fabian to hang out with him. He was the one sending too many texts and not getting a response as often as he wanted.

And there’s so much he _does_ want to talk to Fabian about. But the scene that mirror in the Forest showed him—he can’t let go of that.

_Not all of these people are gonna end up together._

The golden warmth fades slowly from the sky, and Riz unlatches the window, pushes it open. The air is cool on his face as he kneels in front of the window and watches the dusk deepen into night.

He never normally spends so much time _still_. Not thinking or working, but just looking at the sky. His skin itches with the urge to do something, and his mind is loud, but he tries his best to focus on the memory of Cassandra. Their body a mountainous expanse of dark smooth glass punctuated by the occasional star, glittering with mysterious promise. This body unfolds itself and fills Riz’s mind, towering but not frightening.

“Everyone else seems to know if they want to make out with someone or not,” he whispers, so that his mom won’t hear anything from the kitchen. “I have no idea. And I know my dad said that’s okay and I know that in the Forest I said that I love my friends and they love me and that was like, the answer to my nightmare, but I don’t know if… I don’t know if there’s a part of me that _wants_ a different type of love from one of my friends and I don’t know what that love could look like without… sex.” Even privately he hates saying the word, hates the way it makes him feel, conflicted and left behind. “What does that even mean? What do I want?”

He shakes his head and hisses at himself. This is useless.

His mom shouts that dinner’s ready and he scrambles off his bed, starving and frantic with a kind of desperate energy.

The curry his mom has made is delicious, but its heat licking down his throat does nothing to calm him down.

* * *

Baron waves at him from his mirror.

This is a dream. He hasn’t really slept properly in a long time, but this has to be a dream.

“Hello Riz Gukgak,” Baron says, face pressed up against the glass like he’s about to break through. “How have you been?”

Riz says nothing. Maybe if he ignores Baron, he’ll go away.

“Riz Gukgak, you have been asking questions, and I want to come and help you. I heard you are thinking about romance. I don’t know much about romance either, but perhaps we can get somewhere together. I’m not your romance partner any longer, but I can be your partner in this investigation if you will have me.”

Riz doesn’t feel like Baron wants to hurt him, which is new. It’s stupid, but he might as well give Baron a chance. “How are you going to help?”

“I am going to ask you more questions, Riz Gukgak. You think I’m a weird little skeleton boy, don’t you? Why am I a boy? When you created me, why did you make me a boy?”

He holds his hands up, feeling his palms sweat. Is that possible, in a dream? “I don’t know, when I saw you the first time I just assumed…”

“No, Riz Gukgak. You made me the way I am. When you told your friends you had a romance partner you never told them my gender. But when I appear to you, I am a boy. Why is that?”

“Uh. I don’t know. Maybe I want my romance partner to be a boy?” He backs up against the wall. “Ugh, why did I _ever_ say romance partner, I honestly never want to hear those words again in my life…”

Baron’s head spins unnaturally, which would have terrified Riz before but is now just kind of silly. “Do you want your romance partner to be a boy or is there a person you want to be your romance partner who is a boy?”

“Is there a difference?” He wants to sink into the wall behind him. “ _Please_ can we use a different word. I regret it so much.”

“What does romance partner mean to you, Riz Gukgak?” One of Baron’s limbs extends up to grab the top edge of the mirror and he lifts himself till he’s hanging in mid-air, and then he rotates his whole body upside down, but each section of his body separately, like a series of gears. Riz flinches, remembering Fabian on the Leviathan, dangling from rope, blood streaking down his face. “How is a romance partner different from a friend?”

“Well, I don’t know, other people just… make out with their romance par—” He tries to find some other less ridiculous term and then realizes that Baron is right. He did choose that term in the first place precisely because it was gender-neutral, because he didn’t want to tell his friends he liked girls when maybe he didn’t like girls, and he _definitely_ didn’t want to tell his friends he liked boys, whether he liked boys or not. “Partners. Their partners. They kiss and have sex, I guess.”

Baron tuts, a strange mechanical clicking sound. “I am not asking what romance partner means to other people but to _you_ , Riz Gukgak. And even if people didn’t kiss and have sex with their romance partners, would there be something special about the way they feel about each other?”

“I don’t know!” Riz is so frustrated he could scream. This is going nowhere. “I just feel _something_ about Fabian but when other people talk about their crushes they—they imagine kissing them, they imagine having sex, and I don’t do that, so how do I know if what I feel about Fabian is anything at all? And Fabian wants to kiss people! He was always talking about how he wanted to kiss Aelwyn and now he has that, so what could I possibly have to offer him? I don’t know!” He buries his face in his hands and has to breathe through his panic. He’s saying too much. All the things he hasn’t even been allowing himself to think.

“What’s stopping you from trying to figure it out?” Baron’s eerie voice echoes in his head.

“I’m scared,” Riz admits. “I always wanted him to be my friend and it took so long for us to get to where we are now and I don’t want him to look at me differently or worse, to stop being my friend. I don’t want him to ever think I’m weird anymore.”

“And what do we do when we are afraid?” Baron sounds—too close. Riz uncovers his face and Baron’s right in front of him. Which _is_ terrifying.

But Baron puts his skeletal hands around Riz’s, and Riz feels—comforted. A faint twinkling melody drifts into the room, like something from one of those old wind-up music boxes. Baron sways to the ghostly rhythm, and tugs on Riz’s hands to encourage him to dance.

Riz moves, hesitant and awkward. But he moves. “We keep going towards what we’re most afraid of,” he says, hoarsely.

Baron nods, almost sweetly. “Don’t hate yourself for what you don’t know about yourself, Riz Gukgak.” He leans into Riz, his head resting on Riz’s shoulder, and then he’s gone. It feels like he’s melted into Riz’s own body, and Riz is left standing there, dancing alone in front of his mirror. But he knows he isn’t alone.

* * *

Adaine asks him to hang out for what feels like the first time in ages. When he gets to the coffee shop opposite Elmville Public Library, he sees Adaine has her hair up in a bun, showing an undercut. Riz blinks at her, and Adaine pats her shaved hair self-consciously. “Kristen bought clippers and wanted to practise on somebody,” she explains.

“It looks really good!” Riz says, which is true. He wonders, momentarily, if Kristen might want to practise on him.

They sit and drink coffee and catch up. Adaine seems to be doing really well, and Riz is glad. She tells Riz about new spells, and studying with Ayda in Compass Points. “Although I would really _love_ if I didn’t keep walking in on Ayda and Fig everywhere,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I thought I could finally be safe with Tracker gone for a while but it looks like Ayda and Fig are getting into the stage of their relationship where they can’t keep their hands off each other now.”

Riz puts a hand on Adaine’s shoulder consolingly. This is a major part of their friendship. Complaining about their horny friends. “And your sister and Fabian…?” he asks, though he doesn’t really want to know. Or he kind of does. _Fuck._

“Oh. Didn’t Fabian tell you? That was over ages ago! It was only a thing for like, two weeks. I kind of already forgot about it, Aelwyn’s been through like _so_ many other guys by now. Although.” Adaine pauses, thinking. “She’s kind of been hanging out a lot with the Seven Maidens lately.”

It’s taking an extreme amount of effort right now for Riz not to curl up into a ball of emotion and roll out of the coffee shop and straight to Seacaster Manor.

“I didn’t know that about her and Fabian,” he says, as disinterestedly as he can. “Huh.”

“I mean, I’m not judging her and I think she knows that sleeping around isn’t the healthiest thing she could be doing but otherwise she’s trying her best and we’re talking a lot. It’s hard for me to think we both really could’ve killed each other before but… now I have a big sister again.” Adaine’s misty-eyed. Riz almost immediately wells up, too. It’s terrible. Seeing his friends near tears is guaranteed to make him cry.

He dabs at his face with a napkin and sips his coffee and thinks about how he really should text Fabian.

* * *

After the dream about Baron, he’d woken up with the impulse to get in touch with Fabian. To listen to his dream, to go towards his fear. But then he thought about how he didn’t really want to screw up whatever Fabian had going with Aelwyn. He didn’t want to stand in the way of that. 

But that’s not an issue anymore.

It’s only midday when he says goodbye to Adaine, who heads off to the library across the street, and he wants to go see Fabian _now_ , but he goes back to his office. He assembles a sandwich out of ingredients in his mini fridge, and he takes the time to think it over again.

When did it start? When he found out Fabian had given him the briefcase, maybe. The handwritten business cards. Or just riding with Fabian on the Hangman one day in freshman year, clinging onto Fabian’s back and listening to the way Fabian talks to his motorcycle, fond and delighted and proud.

But it used to be okay. He used to think he’d be happy if they could just be best friends forever. Then it was spring break and Fabian crumpled like something disposable, and when he climbed out of his misery he was different and he looked at Riz differently, a light in his solitary eye like he understood Riz better than before. And Riz wanted not just to be Fabian’s best friend, but to be Fabian’s. Period. Though he doesn’t know what that means, really.

But if he gets this wrong—and there’s a good chance he will get it wrong because he doesn’t even know what getting it right would look like—Fabian might never speak to him again, never call him the Ball like it’s an endearment.

He thinks of Kristen soaring directly into the Nightmare King’s chest, the shadowy ribcage shrouded in tattered robes.

He texts Fabian.

* * *

It’s twilight when Riz arrives at Seacaster Manor. Fabian sent the Hangman to get him. On the way here, alone on the rumbling back of the motorcycle, Riz offered up a prayer to the darkening sky. He’d picked this time of day to meet on purpose, just as the stars are coming out.

Fabian bursts out of the front door of the manor, clearly having received some communication from his bike. “The Ball! At last! You’ve been busy. I’ve been reduced to reading about your latest accomplishments in the local newspaper.” He looks—hurt, but biting his lip and trying to hide it.

Riz grimaces. He doesn’t even know how some of his stupid cases got into the news. They must really have nothing better to report on. “I’m sorry. I have a lot to tell you. I’ve been a bad friend. But I’ve been trying to figure some things out. Not just cases, but some other things too.”

They stand there by the front door staring at each other before Fabian finally invites Riz inside. Cathilda brings them cookies, but Riz is too nervous to eat. Fabian drapes himself over half of the sofa, and Riz sits hunched in an armchair.

He clears his throat. “So I heard you and Aelwyn broke up.”

“I’m not sure she was ever my girlfriend.” Fabian rubs the back of his neck uneasily, looking at the plate of cookies. “I mean. I got my kisses in, and then some, but that was it. She is _hot_ though. The sex was—”

“Wait,” Riz says, very loudly. “I need to tell you something.” He closes his eyes. If he can run off into the Forest of the Nightmare King alone without his friends, he can do this. “I like you.”

He opens his eyes again because he needs to see Fabian’s reaction. Fabian’s eye is wide, but it’s only surprise. There’s no disgust, or dismissal.

He should take that as permission to continue. “I want to clarify firstly that when I say that I like you I don’t mean I want to h—hook up with you. I mean. I don’t know what I mean.” There he goes, fucking this up already. But then an image comes to him, almost a vision. “No, hold on, I mean. I mean that when you saved me on those stairs in the Forest and wrapped me in your sheet and held me in your arms”—his cheeks are burning like he’s reliving that kiss from the fire elemental and he has to wipe his sweaty hands on his trousers—“I wanted you to keep holding me forever.”

The beginning of a smile twitches on Fabian’s lips, and Riz is so terrified that Fabian is going to laugh at him. But the smile touches Fabian’s face like a sunrise touches the sky. It’s joy, not derision.

“Really?” Fabian asks. “Forever?”

Riz can’t believe that’s the word Fabian is stuck on. They’re _teenagers_ , Riz doesn’t expect them to get married right away. Forever is hyperbole and not something Fabian should fixate on. But then, embarrassingly, Riz realizes he kind of likes it. Likes the way it makes Fabian smile. 

“Did you hear the rest of what I just said?” Riz says, trying to hold back a smile himself. It’s too early to celebrate. The case isn’t closed.

“You don’t want to have sex with me,” Fabian says.

“Yes. Wait. No. It’s not like I _actively_ don’t want to have sex with you. It’s more like—I’ve just never had the desire to have sex with anyone. And I understand it’s something you want, you were literally trying to tell me about sex with Aelwyn just a minute ago”—he laughs, an awkward huff of air—“so it’s fine if you can’t really deal with the thought of a relationship where there might never be sex…”

“Might?”

“I don’t hate the idea of sex,” Riz says. “I just don’t think I naturally want it the way you or Kristen do. But that doesn’t mean I would never try it. I don’t really know, at this point. I can’t think of what happens beyond this. Beyond me just telling you I like you.”

“And kissing? How do you feel about kissing?” Fabian just looks so… rapt. Leaning forward with his hands cupped around his face. Like he’s interested in what Riz is saying not only for his own benefit, but because he really, truly wants to know this about Riz.

And Riz has never really been able to imagine kissing anybody before, but he thinks he can almost feel something pulling at him, a hand reaching inside him and grabbing his heart and tugging him towards Fabian with force, like it wants him to fall completely into Fabian, and maybe that’s what wanting to kiss somebody feels like. He doesn’t know.

“We could definitely try that,” Riz says, and his voice is so thin, like the last flicker of a candle before it’s snuffed out by the wind. Where did his ability to speak go?

“Okay,” Fabian says, and his voice doesn’t sound much stronger. “But first. You said you want me to hold you.”

“Y-yeah.”

“Can we just start with that?”

Riz nods, not trusting his own voice anymore. Fabian stands up and takes Riz’s hand, and Riz is so goddamn sweaty but Fabian holds on. He holds on, and he leads Riz up the stairs to his bedroom, to the king-size bed with pristine white sheets, neatly made by Cathilda, most likely. Riz brushes his knuckles against the fabric and sighs. Elven sheets.

Fabian lies down on the bed and gestures at all the space beside him. Riz sinks down into it, into the cloud of cream, and Fabian slides closer to him. He puts an arm around Riz’s waist and he holds him.

Riz is going to cry. He thinks about all those nights on the Hangvan when all the Bad Kids were piled into it together and they each had their own little cozy nook and he could sleep knowing that Fabian was right beside him, only a blanket and a couple of cushions away. He thinks about Fabian just taking a moment to hold him in the middle of their big battle in the Forest, when Riz had fully died and been brought back to life only seconds ago.

They could all have died in that Forest, but here he is. Here’s Fabian, holding him again.

Riz does cry.

Fabian nuzzles his neck and murmurs, “Is this why you’ve been avoiding me? Because you were jealous of Aelwyn?”

“I wasn’t jealous,” Riz says. Sniffles, more like.

“Look, I won’t lie, sex _was_ fun. But I think I can live fine without it. It’s you I can’t stop thinking about.” Fabian’s breath is so warm on Riz’s neck. “I missed you. We spent nearly every day together during spring break and then we came back and we barely saw each other. I missed you, the Ball.”

Riz smushes his face into the sheet to dry his tears. He’s feeling too much. He can’t believe he’s hearing Fabian say something to him that he’s been wanting to say to Fabian. He missed Fabian, too. “Why didn’t you say anything to me first? If you like me?”

Fabian splutters. “You’ve made it very clear this whole time that we’re best friends! From the beginning of our acquaintance you were adamant that you were my best friend and you persevered no matter how much I tried to shake you off. You’re the most persistent person I know! I thought that if you were looking for anything else from me you would broadcast those intentions too!”

“This is different! I’m not going to go round yelling at everyone that I’m your boyfriend when I’m not!”

Fabian is laughing against his back, squeezing his arm tighter around Riz. “You may feel free to start doing that, if you want.”

“If I want?” Riz’s heart is beating wildly like it’s been dunked in coffee and there’s that hand around it again, that physical force pulling him towards Fabian, and he’s a rogue, dammit. He was never meant to be any good at strength contests.

He turns so he’s facing Fabian. Fabian’s long silver hair and his beautiful mouth that Riz has never been able to imagine himself kissing. “You’re going to have a very annoying boyfriend on your hands,” he says, and then he kisses that mouth.

It’s startling, the closeness. It makes him feel extraordinarily present in this moment with Fabian. Like they’re having a silent conversation he can only follow by listening for the subtle changes in Fabian’s breathing.

When he breaks the kiss, he puts his forehead against Fabian’s chest, and Fabian runs his hand through Riz’s hair. “What did you think of that?”

“It was strange, but I liked it,” Riz decides. “I like this more, though.” He digs his nose into Fabian’s chest, shivering at the sensation of Fabian’s fingers skimming over his scalp. “But I wouldn’t mind kissing again.”

Fabian kisses his hair and he thinks about being Fabian’s boyfriend.

They still have so much left to figure out, and the mystery of what they’ll be together lies ahead of them, obscure and inscrutable from where Riz is right now, but he can’t believe he ever thought this was anything as scary as Kristen flying towards the Nightmare King.

Fabian’s holding him forever, for now, and Riz—Riz wants to go to sleep, just like this.

* * *

In the morning, he texts Kristen: _I think I’ll come pray with you today. Is that okay?_

**Author's Note:**

> I really love writing a Riz who's on the ace spectrum and he means a lot to me. If you enjoyed this and you're looking for more aspec Riz, check out my other fic ["tell me it won't always be this hard"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22946209) for a slightly different take on how Riz approaches his sexuality!
> 
> Comments are adored, and especially during this difficult time I would love to hear from my readers <3 Come hit me up on my [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com) if you wanna chat about Fantasy High and our amazing new nonbinary deity and Fabian's incredible sheet rescue of Riz! Hoot growl! 🤟

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [scared, sacred](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23534698) by [rainny_days](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainny_days/pseuds/rainny_days)




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